


A Long Way From Home (and a Longer Journey Back)

by rho_nin



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: APW is an all ports warning so you know if someone leaves the country, Biblical References, Blood, Blood and Gore, Case Fic, Derogatory Language, Endeavour Morse Whump, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt Endeavour Morse, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not british and I just imitate how people on TV talk forgive me, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Kidnapping, Lawsuits, Negative Depictions of Christianity, Period Typical Attitudes, Serial Killers, Sex work is mentioned, Whump, also slight anachronisms but not very bad ones, but only slightly - Freeform, gay people exist and i wasn't going to do as extreme homophobia as existed so, gratuitous breaking of traffic laws, in graphic detail, like really fucked up biblical references, morse gets the crap beat out of him and there are a couple points where it is talked about, mostly towards women and also basically only by one guy, or at least of christians, there are no ships but read it however you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18728284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rho_nin/pseuds/rho_nin
Summary: After Morse goes missing, Thursday would like nothing better than to put everything off to the side and find him.  Unfortunately, one grisly murder after another is just not letting that happen.





	A Long Way From Home (and a Longer Journey Back)

Detective Inspector Thursday had spent the first week after Morse's disappearance delegating every case that came his way, hoping to snatch some time for himself that he could spend looking for Morse. He'd been worried enough when his bagman didn't show up to pick him up, but he'd gotten to the station on his own and simply expected to find Morse snoring at his desk when he came in.

Morse had not been at his desk.

Failing that, Thursday had gone to Morse's flat during lunch on the third day. He had a key, one that Morse had given him a month or two after he'd first moved in. "Just in case," Morse had said with a guarded expression. Thursday knew as well as Morse did that was unlikely, what with Morse's memory and his precision. Both men had silently agreed not to comment on what was implied. Thursday wished they'd discussed it in a little more detail now.

Morse's flat was clean, which was unlikely enough. He'd expected it to be as cluttered as the young man's desk. When Thursday opened his fridge, he could smell the milk already beginning to curdle. But aside from the milk and a block of cheddar cheese, the only food Morse seemed to have was whiskey, brandy, and beer. Thursday had left the fridge more or less untouched after that. The last thing Thursday noticed was the low, periodic static sound that played incessantly through the flat. For a second, Thursday had thought a fly was trapped somewhere, but the true culprit was much more obvious (something that Thursday couldn't help but think Morse would've seen in a heartbeat).

Morse's turntable was skipping, playing the same few notes of Chopin's _Nocturne_ and skipping back to the beginning of the progression every four seconds or so. Thursday gently took the needle off, slid the record back into its sleeve, did one last sweep of the flat, and left, locking the door behind him.

"Oh my god," a woman's voice had exclaimed, behind him. "Thank god you're here, I've been worried sick."

Thursday had looked about, surprised, and seen the nurse he'd charged with looking after Morse.

"You're his colleague, you said," she continued. "You're Inspector Thursday. I remember; he told me about you. Do you know what's going on?"

"No," Thursday told her honestly. "Do you?"

"Only that something's happened to him. I've been bringing him breakfasts—not big ones, just enough so he's not passing out through the day—and he hasn't opened the door for the last few mornings." She crossed her arms. "He hasn't been at work, has he? Not if you're here."

Thursday had only nodded, and Ms. Hicks had asked him to keep her informed as they looked for Morse, which he'd agreed to. After that one half-hour in Morse's flat, though, he hadn't gone back. There wasn't anything there for him. He had to be somewhere else—or the clues had to be, at any rate. The flat was too barren to be of any real help.

So Thursday had turned instead to looking for the Jaguar, which Morse was in charge of as part of his duties as bagman.

It wasn't at the flat and it wasn't at Thursday's house, so he walked the streets between the two, looking for anywhere it might have been stashed or parked, all to no avail. Even when Thursday had ventured into the side streets and the streets that they linked, the Jaguar was nowhere to be found. It had just vanished. Disheartened, Thursday had let the case lie and helped catch a small-time arsonist in the meantime. Two young girls had been burned, one was still in the hospital, but the other fires were just trashcans and weeds, set for no reason other than a love for the flame. Cowley Station closed the case quickly after they found a young man about 28 years old— _Morse's age,_ had been Thursday's first thought—with a lighter who was dropping wads of flaming paper into a dumpster. 'Morgan Daley' was the man's name, and he was nothing but young, dumb, and foolish.

As Thursday rode back to his house, he caught a glimpse of a familiar black car. _"STOP!"_ he'd screamed at the poor constable, who slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a screeching halt.

Thursday had wrenched the car door open and leapt out before the constable could say anything to him.

It was his Jag, alright. It was parked neatly, not as if the driver was in a hurry, and it wasn't dented, so Thursday thought it unlikely that it was the work of a car thief. There wasn't any blood in it either, which either meant it had been cleaned exceptionally well, or there just hadn't been any violence in it. Thursday favored the latter, if only because it meant that Morse hadn't been hurt in _his car,_ and he'd still be able to stand driving in it.

The passenger window, the one not flush against the alley wall, was cracked open, just wide enough for Thursday's arm to reach in and roll it down more. That was deliberate. It had to be. Thursday looked over to the constable, who stood awkwardly by the car, and waved him over. He could open his car fine on his own, but someone had to radio the nick with the news that they'd found Thursday's car and as such had found the last spot they could place Morse. Despite Mr. Bright's insistence that they couldn't throw away their duties as officers of the law just to go "gallivanting about the country" looking for Morse, which Thursday grudgingly agreed with, the Chief Superintendent couldn't ignore something like this.

The next four days were spent in agony, waiting for results on everything from toxicology to mechanics to tell him what had happened in the car.

But the best crime labs Oxford had to offer came up with nothing. As far as they could tell, Morse drove to the alley, parked, and just walked away, leaving it all so that Thursday would be able to fish the keys out of the glove compartment.

Thursday hadn't liked that at all.

Still, they distributed photos of Morse and Dorothea Frazil's paper ran a story about Morse's disappearance, but after two weeks of absolutely nothing, Thursday was forced to move on to other things. Specifically, Mr. Bright had called into question his efficacy as an inspector and demanded that he drop it until further notice, but the result was the same: while Morse was god-knows-where, Thursday had a murder to solve. He could only be thankful it wasn't Morse's murder.

The victim was found in a church that was on the border between County and City jurisdiction, so Mr. Bright had pulled some strings to leave Thursday to deal with it. Every part of the murder, though, made Thursday think of Morse and how this was his sort of crime: the body was nailed to the ceiling in a gruesome defiance of physics, her long black hair cascaded downwards, some of it sticking together with blood. The young white woman was dressed in red and her blood painted the stones beneath her, spelling out the letters 'MM.' Thursday spent nearly half an hour in the church as the constables helped Dr. DeBryn get her down without damaging the integrity of the body. It was gruesome, nerve-wracking, and tedious, but at least Thursday couldn't think about anything else. For the most part, anyway.

"Where's Morse?" was the first thing DeBryn asked when they arrived at the scene, and Thursday had to tell him that they didn't know, that he was missing, and they were still trying to find him. DeBryn hadn't reacted much so far as Thursday could see, but the rest of their meeting had been made of short, clipped sentences. Thursday left quickly.

At his desk, all he had out were two files. One was everything they'd been able to learn from the young woman's corpse. It listed the drugs she liked to use and the levels of alcohol in her blood at the time of death (which was within legal limits). It evaluated the bruising on her feet and the indications of sexual activity about an hour or two before her murder. It showed that the nails were all post-mortem due to the amount of blood around her hands but the head injury and the carving were peri-mortem; she would have suffered horribly before she died, nails or no. A good thing Morse wasn't around to read that.

The other file was everything Thursday had on Morse and his vanishing act. There was no blood at his flat, no blood in or around the Jag, and apparently nothing in between. To Thursday's recollection, Morse hadn't been on any case that particularly might have left him as a target of kidnapping, though he had been working even later nights than usual. One slip of paper from Win's stationary at home, which read 'to-do' at the top and was surrounded by colored cupcakes, had a few notes about other possible motives for kidnapping Morse. It listed everything from 'he's police and that's enough' to 'family?' not to mention everything in between. Another paper, this one typed on Thursday's typewriter, was the formalized record of the last people to see Morse. Strange had seen him last at the station, Thursday himself had seen him after Morse drove him home (only to turn right back around and return to the station, according to what Morse had told him), and a geriatric old lady who ran a corner store had recognized his picture when asked. Every lead was as useless as the last. The car's location gave them a starting point, so long as he'd walked, but there was no sign of a struggle around the Jag. It wasn't like Morse to disappear for days on end unless he was in serious trouble.

Around two o'clock of the eighteenth day after Morse had disappeared, Bright appeared in Thursday's office and caught him with his nose buried in Morse's file instead of the girl's. He took Morse's file back to his own office across the nick and came back thirty minutes later with Strange in tow.

"Detective Inspector Thursday," Bright began, his voice taut and brittle, "you have been utterly negligent in this case. While you're looking at Morse's file for the umpteenth time, we have another body in a church. This is serial murder, and you are to be _on the case!"_

Thursday didn't shrink into his chair as the other officers at the nick did, but he did look down at the pens on his desk, already grieving the loss of his one lifeline to Morse, his bagman and his friend. He held out a hand, and Bright slapped a new file into it.

"You and Sergeant Jakes, along with Constable Strange, will go to see the new body, and you will do your job, and you will come back here with information on the victim. Do I make myself clear to you, Inspector Thursday?"

"Yes, sir," Thursday replied, his voice as tight as his Superintendent's. "Crystal."

* * *

Max DeBryn was not usually one for wallowing, but he allowed himself a second or two of worry for his well-educated compatriot before throwing himself into the post-mortem.

The woman was likely in her early thirties. She had a few swollen joints and even a couple lesions on her skin that looked an awful lot like cutaneous symptoms of gonorrhea. The Gram stain wouldn't be of any use, given that the victim was female, so he'd taken a culture of various fluids and waited for them to develop as he looked her over more.

The carvings on her back seemed unintelligible at first, but closer inspection revealed more telling facts: instead of runes or symbols or some wishy-washy New Age occult nonsense, they were words. Words repeated over and over, criss-crossing every which way with no angle that the author seemed to start from, but words never the less.

'Harlot,' read the first that he identified. The next was 'sinner' and after that 'libber.'

Carefully, he wrote down each word on a pad of paper, no matter how crass or cruel.

In the end, he had a list of just over ten words, some repeated and some carved only once, that were etched into the young victim's skin. On one hand, it would probably be of interest to the detectives at Cowley. On the other, the wounds had so horribly warped a tattoo on the the victims upper shoulder that they'd probably grow frustrated trying to identify her. She certainly had no identifying objects on her and DeBryn had yet to find a match for her fingerprints, so it wasn't looking great. Any attempt to discover who she was with dental records would take time and probably a dentist, neither of which DeBryn had on hand.

Of the more concrete discoveries he'd made, DeBryn examined the victim's head. The parietal bone was caved in at a steep angle which seemed to be an almost-certain cause of death. The hole was made of something rectangular, if he had to guess from the impact pattern.

She had two crowns in her teeth, one tasteful piercing in each ear, and ruby-red acrylic nails, but few other identifying marks. He'd probably check her blood type later, in the hope she'd donated or something of the like, but for right now, all he could do was fill out paperwork in an empty room, with only his newest corpse as an indifferent audience.

"Who knew I was so popular," he joked, but it fell flat with no one to snort at it.

Sighing, he clicked his ballpoint pen and continued with his notes.

* * *

The new victim was not nailed to the ceiling. The young black man had been identified by his wallet as Steven Brown, and he lay face down on the church floor. A railroad spike had been driven through his spine but, like the first woman for whom they still didn't have a name, it had been done post-mortem. What DeBryn suspected as the actual cause of death was the cut around his neck. It was irregular, almost like rope. Time of death was estimated to be about three A.M. and DeBryn said that Mr. Brown had likely been dragged or carried to the church. Brown's hand was clenched and almost solid with rigor mortis, but DeBryn pried it open to reveal...

"That's expensive lipstick," Jakes said immediately, taking a drag on his cigarette.

"The casing looks like silver," Thursday agreed.

As the body was carted away to the morgue for Dr. DeBryn to examine further, Thursday circled the church, looking for something out of place. There wasn't much blood on the stone floor, not like there had been with the other body, and everything about the church itself seemed to be normal: Bibles were in their places in the pews, the hymn books were all stacked neatly by the door, and the church silver was out...

Wait.

The church silver was out?

Thursday wasn't one for churches, not really, but most were still a little more guarded with their precious metals, as far as he knew. There wasn't a service today, and there hadn't been one yesterday either, according to the pastor. Anyway, Father Boyle would have definitely noticed the corpse when he came out to set up the chapel. That wasn't something that you just _missed._

He approached the altar, but the silver just seemed to be thrown haphazardly on the surface, with no rhyme or reason to it. Thursday tried to look at it from above, but he got the same impression.

"Sir?" called Strange. "What are you doing?"

"Constable, get Sergeant Jakes, will you? Then help me look at this. It's odd, alright."

Thursday continued circling the altar and the curious configuration of silver on it. Why were the cups arranged that way? Was that an urn, or just a pot? Why put knives like that?

"You wanted me, sir?" Jakes appeared at Thursday's shoulder, the smell of his cigarette heralding his presence. Strange lurked behind him.

"Yes, that's right." Thursday gestured to the altar covered in silver. "What do you make of this? I reckon it's deliberate, but I haven't the faintest idea why it's here."

Jakes didn't respond immediately; he stood at the corner of the altar, mouthing something and tapping his finger. After about a minute, he looked to Thursday. "It may be a bit out there, sir, but there are twenty nine pieces of silver here. That's if you count all the knives individually. There's thirty, sir, if you count the lipstick in Brown's hand. But it might be a coincidence."

Thursday shook his head. "You'll have to remind me of the significance of that."

"Judas Iscariot was paid thirty pieces of silver to betray Christ," Strange put in. "Maybe that's the reasoning? We're in a church after all, and Father Boyle said he'd never seen our victim at the services on Sunday."

Thursday and Jakes both took it down as a possibility, had the silver taken in for fingerprints, and had the photographers take photos of the altar before heading back to the station.

* * *

As soon as Thursday wasn't in the presence of a dead body, his mind turned back to the matter he'd been trying to solve for the last fifteen days. Even though Morse didn't seem to be anywhere in Oxford that they could find, that didn't mean he couldn't get caught up in whatever this crime is. If anyone could get involved in serial murder while AWOL, it would be Morse.

Still, Thursday couldn't quite ignore the two murders. Both of them seemed religious based on the scene of the crime if nothing else, and the thirty silver spoke to that as well. If they could find out who the woman was, they might be able to link her to Steven Brown and with that find whoever had killed the two of them. 'MM' had to be something biblical too, Thursday reasoned, so if he could find what that was, he'd be well on his way to puzzling the whole thing out.

Thursday sighed, running a hand through his hair. Jakes looked at him, but didn't say anything; the man at least had a good sense for when to shut up. His entire reasoning was based on suspicion and conjecture—things he normally berated Morse for relying on. But it was Oxford, and odd murders abounded. If leaping connections were what was needed to solve them, Thursday would do his best to deliver.

Shifting in his seat, Thursday said, "We ought to pay a visit to Brown's family, ask the usual questions."

"I don't have his address yet, sir. I'll need to look it up in the phonebook."

Thursday nodded. "Good man."

* * *

Steven Brown lived in a small flat just around the corner from a shoe store. His flatmate, an American studying at St. Johns named Gideon Radley, told Thursday and Jakes that Brown had been staying at the flat day in and day out for a few weeks now—his leg had been broken in a car accident and he had a few other injuries that were taking a while to heal.

"When was the car accident?" Jakes had asked for the third time.

"Tuesday, November 21st," Radley repeated irritably. "Look, Steven wasn't at fault. He was next to the guy driving, but he wasn't at fault. He barely even knew the guy. They were just carpooling for some work thing. The driver was an idiot. He didn't even have the smell of alcohol on him; he just wasn't paying attention."

Thursday scowled. Radley wasn't disagreeable, or at least he hadn't been until Jakes had asked him about dates every few questions, but the interviewing was going nowhere.

But a car accident... that could be a motive. It was a thin connection if Brown wasn't the driver, but still. Worth a shot. Thursday shot a look to Jakes, who obliged him wordlessly. "What else can you tell us about the accident? You said Mr. Brown didn't have any enemies. Could, perhaps, this have made him some?"

Shrugging, Radley conceded. "There was a lawsuit afterward. Steven went to court a couple times—he ended up with a huge sum of money. I don't remember how much, exactly, but enough he didn't have to worry at all about his medical bills. Or rent, for that matter." Radley tapped at his mouth. "He was suing the driver. I suppose that's what you wanted to ask next? Well, the family of the other driver sued too, but I don't remember the outcome of that. Long story short, Steven got what looked like his driver's life savings and the plaintiff yelled at him for a while, alright. Not the prettiest thing a court artist could draw."

"Do you know the name of the driver?" Thursday prodded.

"Not off the top of my head. Steven mostly called him 'that arse,' so I didn't hear it a lot. It should be in the paper, though." Radley went hunting through the flat for his stack of the more recent newspapers he'd saved, Thursday and Jakes in tow.

Eventually, Radley found a small crate that Thursday swore they'd already passed three times. He pulled out a paper, folded, wrapped with tissue paper, and tied with string, and handed it off to Jakes. "This should have the article with the actual case. There are about five others that reference it, though. Would you like me to get those, too?"

At the thought of going on another indefinite search of the flat, which was more cluttered than Morse's, Thursday shook his head vigorously. "No need. Just give us the date and section, and we'll find it in our archive."

Radley reeled off the volume, number, date, _and_ section, much to Thursday's irritation. Jakes pocketed the article, which was from a little over a month ago, and turned to leave. Thursday waved him back.

"One more thing, Mr. Radley," said Thursday. "Do you know who stood to inherit Mr. Brown's money after his death?"

"No, sorry. Steven was just 28; he didn't have a will. Didn't think he would need one for a long time." Radley didn't clarify to say whether he or his flatmate had thought that.

Jakes, seemingly struck by his own idea, asked, "Did he know any women?"

Radley shook his head. "No, he, ah, leaned a little bit more towards men. Wasn't too public with it all, and I don't want to defame the dead or anything, but he met with a guy he called 'Harris' at least once a week."

"How about women in a work context?" Thursday already knew what Brown did for a living—he was a clerk at the shoe store around the corner—and he probably knew at least a _few_ birds, gay or not. "Or even just customers. Anyone at all."

"Sorry, no one he mentioned to me."

"Alright. Thank you, Mr. Radley. If you think of anything else, you can reach us at this number," Thursday said, handing Radley a business card. Radley nodded and showed them out the door.

"Well, he was just falling apart at the seams," Jakes snarked, lighting a new cigarette.

"People respond to death in different ways," Thursday replied tiredly. "Besides, Radley and Brown didn't seem that close—Brown barely told him anything."

"Probably told this 'Harris' a hell of a lot more," grumbled Jakes. "Too bad we might never find 'im. Harris might not even be his real name, never mind his first or last."

"Mm," Thursday said noncommittally as they got in the car. He rubbed at his chin, thinking. He could do with a shave soon; it was prickly. "Soon as we're back at the nick, get on finding Harris. Call up anyone you want, just get a list of possibilities. I'll set about looking for more about our first victim."

"Yessir," Jakes said as he turned over the engine.

* * *

The first victim, dubbed by most of the station 'M2' for the letters her blood had spelled out, hadn't any identification when they'd found her. The only thing around her neck was a locket in the shape of a cross with a lock of hair in it. It was dark, but there wasn't any other way to identify it. She did have a few tattoos, mostly on her back, but they seemed to only be there because she liked the designs, not for any sort of association. She also had a few birthmarks on her right upper arm. They were discolored patches that circled her shoulder and dotted the stretch beneath it like fawn spots. They didn't fit with anything Thursday had come across before, much to his frustration.

Had Dr. DeBryn said anything about it? Thursday had been too distracted at the time to pay much mind to the particulars of the victim's skin condition if he had. If he was lucky, though, it would be in the report.

His bones groaning as he stood up from his stiff wooden chair, Thursday retrieved the report from his filing cabinet.

It had been added to in the days between the discovery of the woman's death and Steven Brown's, and listed a few places the woman had been seen regularly. Most places were dive bars, cheap motels, and clubs that were only a step up from the dives, but there was one place on the list that didn't fit the rest of it. A nicer flat on the outskirts of Oxford, where the woman had spent at least a few nights. Thursday had gone there when he'd first got the news and learned that the owner of the house, a man named Hugh Paulson, had died three days before his periodic visitor had. "Nice young woman," the landlady had told him. "They'd a row a while back and she didn't come 'round much except to pick up some of her things. I was't awake for that night, but the police were called."

The medical section of the report mentioned nothing as personal as that but did explain that the discoloration was called vitiligo. Thursday sighed. Vitiligo probably wouldn't turn up anything, but if he could get the report of the domestic disturbance, that might at least give a name.

A few minutes later found Thursday with the police report on his desk and a pad of paper at his right.

The neighbors' statements indicated that at about three in the morning, they'd started to hear screaming and the sound of various kitchenware shattering. The next-door neighbor had called the police immediately and woken her husband not long after to check outside. By the time the officers had arrived, there was no sign of the 'nice young woman' who'd lived there, but there was significant damage to the first floor of the house. Mrs. Layton gave a description of the woman and her first name, Amanda, though she'd never heard Amanda's surname. Mr. Layton had apparently thought Amanda's last name was Paulson, since that was the man's name, but never bothered to confirm it.

Infuriating, this case was.

Thursday set to looking for any police records with for a woman fitting Mrs. Layton's description of 'Amanda' and for Paulson's obituary.

He found Paulson's obituary quickly, and then found a record of court-mandated anger management because of property damage, a couple drunk and disorderlies, and court transcripts from a civil suit regarding a motor collision. When he saw the plaintiffs' names listed and noticed 'Steven Brown' listed among the family of a nurse named Sarah Tillson and her sister Phoebe, Thursday nabbed the newspaper off Jakes' desk and read through the article about the suit that had cost the defendant his fortune.

The title read 'Following Car Crash With 2 Fatalities, Lawsuit Brings Fire to the Court' and a photograph of a blocky man in his early forties spitting as he spoke was just below it. The caption named him as Hugh Paulson, the defendant, as he railed against the outrageous claims made by his coworker and the Tillson family.

The rest of the article didn't paint him in a better light.

Brown apparently described him as a 'racist twat' with 'little to no consideration for his colleagues, white or black, and a smug disposition.' Mrs. Miriam Tillson called him callous no fewer than twenty times over the course of the suit and had burst into tears when Hugh Paulson had asked her why she was doing so much when he'd made a 'common mistake.'

Thursday liked the bloke less with every sentence.

However, an Amanda Goldsmith had come to the stand as a character witness for Paulson. She'd been evasive with many questions and had conceded a few times that they'd ridden in a car together and he'd been reckless, but what caught Thursday's eye was that she'd clarified her relationship with Paulson: they'd been dating steadily for about three years, but recently she'd moved out and only seen him to get some of her things from him. The reporter mentioned that Paulson's lawyer had looked gutted to hear how bad their relationship was. Instead of making Paulson out to be a loving boyfriend, he looked either abusive or a cheater, or else a cuckold, thus putting his girlfriend's character in question.

Still, at least he had a name for their first victim now.

The worst thing about the case was that the person with the best motive to kill the two victims was dead himself, and so pretty clear of being a suspect. But he made sense as the murderer and he had the record to indicate he might kill, and it was so _irritating_ to have a perfect suspect who couldn't possibly have committed the crime, since he'd died three days before the first murder was committed.

Unless...

Unless they counted him as the first victim.

Mind spinning, Thursday went on a hunt for Paulson's cause of death.

The obituary said that he'd died at home, which could mean that he'd either died from a drug overdose or committed suicide. Not the most specific. There still had to be a report. It was probably either written by Dr. DeBryn or one of his colleagues and pretty attainable. Thursday would find his answers, and no two ways about it.

* * *

While he waited for the paperwork for an exhumation of Paulson's body to go through, Thursday read through the other articles Radley had said contained references to the motor collision suit. They were all written under a pseudonym but presumably the same person: La Vérité. If Morse was helping him out, Thursday had no doubt that they would have already made the connection to whatever it was that La Vérité was, but he would just have to wait to find out.

As it was, the articles themselves proved interesting. They were in the Editorials and all essays on the failing morality of society, the corruption of people in the church, and how religion left so-called 'devout' men and women a smokescreen to hide their misbehavior behind. La Vérité cited several legal cases, some civil and some criminal, that involved people either active in their church or who were members of the clergy. Paulson's case was mentioned a few times; apparently, Paulson donated both money and time to his church regularly. An interesting facet of the man who'd appeared nothing less than despicable in the article about his civil case. Briefly, Thursday's mind flew to this being another motive, another candidate for murder, before he reminded himself that Paulson was dead and unlikely to harm someone else from beyond the grave.

His phone rang and he picked it up. "Detective Inspector Thursday, Cowley Station."

"Sir, it's Jakes."

"Did you find the Harris fellow?" Thursday asked, shooting to his feet.

"I did. He's alive, sir. Alive and well. I talked to him for a while, asked him about Brown, and he took off like a shot. He's fast, sir, faster than I thought he'd be." Thursday heard the sound of a lighter clicking over the phone and waited. "We might have our killer if we can just catch 'im again."

"Good work Sergeant. Get back to the nick soon; we've got a lot to cover. I'll put out an APW, make sure Harris doesn't leave the country."

"Yes sir." Another click and the call ended.

Thursday smiled grimly. Running was one thing. Murder was another. Just because an unambiguously gay man ran from the police didn't mean he'd killed two people, maybe three if it turned out Paulson was a victim too, even if it didn't fit with the other murders. In the past, they'd had seemingly unconnected murders that turned out to be so tangled as to be woven from the same thread. Why might this be any different?

Still, Harris might turn out to be useful in learning more about Brown, if nothing else.

Three hours later, a few minutes after five o'clock, Harris Jefferson sat in their interrogation room, awkward and stiff. Jakes had found him without help from the APW going into a store just down the street from the house Jakes had met him in front of. Obviously, the man was not a master criminal. Thursday had decided to let him stew for a little, just to see how quickly he could wrangle a confession.

Instead, he loitered by the door with Strange, who was rambling about a football match he'd seen the other night on Thursday's request. They stood where Thursday hoped Jefferson could see them; he wanted to scare him a little more. Thursday looked through the window of the door to the interrogation room and he caught Jefferson's eyes. The man looked terrified, simply put. Sweat dripped down his forehead and his eyes were more whites than iris. Satisfied that they'd accomplished step one of his interrogation, Thursday held up a hand and Strange stopped talking immediately. Jakes appeared from out of sight and joined Thursday as he went in.

"Mr. Harris Jefferson," Thursday greeted, taking a seat. Jakes stayed on his feet, leaning against the wall. "I understand you ran from Sergeant Jakes here, just earlier today. Care to say why?"

"Not really," Jefferson stammered. "Not at all, actually. No."

"Hmm. That's a shame. We have you connected to a young man involved in our investigation. His flatmate says he saw you frequently, in fact. He rather thought the two of you were involved beyond the standard of friendship." Best just to put it out there, really. No point beating around the bush.

"His _flatmate_ said that?!" yelped Jefferson incredulously, a far cry from the timidness he'd affected a moment ago. "That's a laugh. Steven and Gid were the ones involved, not me and Steven. I volunteered as a cover for them, for the obvious reason. Steven and me! Ha! Not a chance. No, if Gid said that, he's trying to throw you off, he is. He can be a right git sometimes."

"You know Gideon Radley well, then?" Jakes asked.

"Sure I do. Went out with him for almost a year, I did. He moved here and then we started going out."

Thursday 'hmphed' and leaned back in his chair. "When was this, then?"

"Oh, I don't know. A while back. It was before Steven showed; Gid dumped me for him."

"And you don't like Steven much, I gather," Thursday said.

"Don't care for him really, no. But it's not like Gid was going to stick with me forever," Jefferson said, his voice turning forlorn. "I wasn't taking care of myself. Had too many drinks too often. I cleaned up, I really did, but Gid saw a cute bloke from Scotland and never looked back at his alcoholic ex-boyfriend. I don't blame him."

"So why'd you cover for them?" interjected Jakes again.

"I know how hard it can be as a gay man. I figured I ought to help them out."

Thursday and Jakes exchanged a look. This was hardly the direction they'd thought this would go in. Thursday cleared his throat. "Mr. Jefferson, Steven was killed this morning."

Jefferson gaped at them.

"We're investigating his murder and another one that appears to be connected."

Jefferson looked down at his hands, still silent. He seemed truly shocked, but Thursday had been wrong before. There was no telling yet if this was another time. "Did it seem like he..." Jefferson trailed off, then swallowed harshly. "Did he suffer? Before he died, I mean? I never thought..."

"It looked like he did," Jakes answered, in what passed as a gentle voice. "He was hanged."

Jefferson burst into tears and threw his face into his arms, wracking his body with sobs.

Thursday gestured to Jakes 'let's go into the hall,' and pushed his chair in as quietly as possible. Once outside, he conferred with Jakes. "He seemed a lot more upset about Steven than anything else he'd said would suggest," Thursday pointed out.

"Maybe an act?" Jakes suggested. "He's overcompensating for saying he didn't like Brown much?"

"Maybe. We'd better get Jefferson back in the cells and go talk to Radley again."

* * *

Radley opened the door for them with a confused quirk of his mouth and blotchy cheeks. He showed them into the sitting room which was _still_ mostly occupied by old newspapers and offered them everything from tea to scotch. When at last they'd turned down everything under the sun, Gideon Radley sat opposite Jakes and Thursday, bookended by two crates, each labeled '1962'.

"We tracked down your Mr. Harris," Thursday said without preamble.

"Did you? Did that tell you more about who killed Steven?" Radley looked between the two detectives and his strong Earl Grey. Thursday could smell it from across the coffee table.

"Maybe. Here's what we came to talk to you about, Mr. Radley." Thursday pulled a wad of letters from his coat pocket and plucked the one off the top to show Radley the return address. "These are letters from you to a Mr. Harris Jefferson, who so kindly provided us with them. Apparently, the two of you knew each other intimately, and then you ditched Harris for Steven. He—"

"No," Radley interrupted. "I mean, fine, Harris and I went out for a while. But I didn't break up with Harris because I wanted to go out with Steven. Harris is an alcoholic. He stopped paying his share of the rent and spent all his money on liquor instead. I don't drink, and his habit was a dealbreaker. I just wasn't going to sit around and wait for him to be better, all the sudden. A relationship like we had—we're both young enough and can't get married as we'd like to—it's not an obligation. Not as I saw it. Never mind the fact that Steven had his eye on Harris. I don't think Harris knew, but he did. Steven didn't have any _other_ reason to go to Harris' neighborhood, after all."

"So you and Brown were never involved?" Jakes asked.

"Yeah, that's right. We were just roommates. We got dinner and went out for drinks and stuff, but I wasn't really looking for a relationship." Radley shrugged and took a sip of his tea, then jerked back. "Ow. Hot. Anyways, that's all of it. Unless you have any other questions."

"Only the one, Mr. Radley," said Thursday. "Ever met a woman named Amanda Goldsmith?"

"Don't think so," replied Radley, clearly without thinking about it. "I spend most my time with my classmates. None of them are named Amanda."

"Well, alright then. Thank you for your time."

* * *

It was two days later that the exhumation paperwork went through and Thursday could finally open Hugh Paulson's coffin legally. In the intervening time, he'd chased down Amanda's employers; one was a cafe owned by one Georgia Reynolds, the other was Magdalen Cabs and owned by Eddie Nero. Hell of a case this was, to have connections even to Nero.

Thursday drove down to the graveyard with Strange and Jakes. They didn't talk as they drove and Thursday had to remind himself as he gripped the steering wheel that trying to break it apart with his bare hands wouldn't do anything to help him. He felt like he was close to _something,_ though he didn't know what. Could the results of DeBryn's examination lead him to the murderer?

DeBryn met them at the site with his medical bag and a terse expression. "The party's just starting, officers. Hustle a bit and you might even see the good part."

Following DeBryn to the grave, Thursday's eye was caught by a few of the headstones. It wasn't often that he was distracted by monuments to the dead, seeing how he dealt with death almost daily, but now... Perhaps he was just worried and seeing things. Some of the names looked like Morse's, until he looked right at them and they were revealed to say 'Edwardson Mark' or even things further removed, like 'Francisco Martín'. None of them actually said 'Endeavour Morse,' but seeing something out of the corner of your eye on a late December afternoon, when things were already slow and dark and the air reeked of cold death, was scary enough on its own. Thursday's skin prickled with fear he couldn't place.

He realized which grave was the right one long before they actually got there since about four men dressed head to toe in white uniforms were digging at it. They didn't look to be very deep in yet, but they were moving at a clip and no mistake.

Thursday, DeBryn, Strange, and Jakes waited for the men to be done. The headstone was new, only a few weeks old if Thursday had to guess, and that made sense, given when Hugh Paulson had died. The message was odd, though; it had no 'beloved son' or even 'R.I.P.', just 'Luke 24:12' and no other markings. A favorite verse from the Bible, then. The _Mail_ had portrayed Paulson as devout in name if not in spirit, after all.

When at last the men in white levered Paulson's coffin out of the grave, Thursday felt his blood thrumming through his hands again, making him itch to know more, giving him a hunger for answers that could be just around the corner. DeBryn approached first, and Strange gave him a hand with the coffin door.

They gasped in synch and Jakes and Thursday rushed to the coffin next.

It was empty.

"Shit," Thursday growled.

"We may still have some answers here," DeBryn placated. "Patience is a virtue." He started digging around the lining, 'hmm'ing and 'ah'ing at various intervals. "There are crumbs here, in the lining. I'm sure you can make some sort of guess from that."

"Someone was in here," Strange said. "They were eating in here. And..."

"And then they got out," Jakes finished.

Thursday could only stare at the coffin, which he'd thought could've had all his answers, and tried not to let his despair show on his face.

* * *

He woke up to a pervasive, bone-chilling cold that seeped through his coat and dragged him back to unconsciousness even as he struggled to wake up. The white was everywhere; covering the ground, coating the dumpsters and rubbish bins, piling up in front of his eyes. His cheek was pressed into the ground and he knew that he'd been there before the snow started falling. Only his cheek touched asphalt. How rude to be dropped on his face. And to be left for dead, of course, but that was going to happen anyway. Morse had known that the instant he'd felt the barrel of the gun press into the back of his head. The Jag wouldn't tell them anything since there was no blood and nothing else his abductor had left behind. An intelligent man was Paulson, though not a patient one.

Morse lifted his head from the asphalt ever so slightly, groaning as he did. His nose had to be broken—one of the last blows he remembered. His shoulder was still sore from a few days ago. As he pushed himself up—slowly, ever so slowly—his chest screamed in pain. As soon as he was sitting in an upwards position (or what passed as one), Morse looked down at his shirt. Blood pooled around his midsection and his shirt was torn, but Morse told himself not to look any longer. He knew what was under the thin fabric, and it was something he didn't want to see.

There was a phone box not too far from him. Morse stared at it longingly. Could he make it there? Could he get close enough to call... to call... who did he need to call?

He was shaking and he felt almost light, like he could float away at the touch of a breeze. Morse crawled over to the wall of the alley, each movement an agony but one he had to endure to get to that phone box and to get _out_ and to be _safe._ It was freedom and safety and refuge and a lifeline, and he had to get there as soon as he could. It was... all he could do. Morse pushed himself up with the bins, then stabilized himself on a dumpster as he shuffled to the mouth of the alley. What time was it? What...

Morse sagged, the dumpster supporting most of his weight. He knew three things with absolute clarity:

1\. Anyone who might be able to help him had no idea where he was. _(He_ had no idea where he was.)

2\. He was in desperate need of medical assistance, and

3\. If he wasn't already dead by the time he saw Thursday again, the Inspector would kill him.

At least there was the phone box.

The facts of his existence now clarified, Morse eased his weight back onto his feet and off the dumpster, leaving him standing on his own. He edged out of the alley, eyes staring at the phone box and only the phone box, and crossed the dark, snow-covered street to the other side. He felt a stabbing pain in his head but he ignored it as he moved forward, closer and closer to the phone box door. Opening it felt like a monumental, Sisyphean effort, but Morse managed it. He fell against the other side of the box as he stumbled inside, but he'd made it. Before he could even decide who to call, he was slipping coins into the slot and dialling.

 _Pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up..._ Morse chanted in his head, too tired to say it aloud. That was bad, right?

"Cowley Police Station, Constable Strange speaking," said the voice at the other end.

"Thursday," Morse blurted, his voice so ragged he worried it was unrecognizable. "I need Thursday. I need to talk to... Please, get Thursday."

A pause on the other end. "Inspector Thursday is at home, sir. It's very early in the morning. Is everything alright?"

"No, no, not everything. I—" Morse forced himself to take a shaky breath. "I don't know where I am, Strange. I woke up—I woke up in an alley. I need Thursday to come get me. I can't—can't get back on my own."

"Morse?!" 

"Strange," Morse replied.

"Morse, can you see any street signs? Anything at all? What's the number for the phone you're using?"

Morse took too long to find the phone number. He should've known where to look. But when it came down to it, he found it, and that was important. He read it off to Strange and turned to look outside for a street sign. "Withington Court and..." He squinted, trying to make it out. "Stratton Way. Strange, I don't—this isn't Oxford, I think."

"Just hold on, matey, we'll get someone out there soon. Can you tell me what happened?" Strange's voice was his witness voice, the one for kids and traumatized old women. Not for him. But... old women... 

"Get someone to keep Teri Lightfoot safe," Morse said. "A man named Paulson is trying to kill her. She was clever but—" Morse cut himself off with a groan, and he sank to the floor of the phone box, holding his side. His head hurt again but it was dulling, thank goodness, and so was everything else, too...

"Morse," Strange's tinny voice needled, "Morse, are you still there? Morse?"

Morse could only moan.

"Try to stay awake. We're coming to get you." Another pause, and Morse distantly worried that Strange didn't believe him. "Morse? Morse? Morse..." As Strange faded into the background, Morse knew three things with absolute clarity:

1\. He was falling asleep, and that was a bad sign.

2\. He was somewhere he didn't recognize with streets too far from Cowley and it could be hours before anyone found him, and

3\. He was definitely bleeding more than he could afford and moreover, he was falling asleep, and that was a bad sign...

* * *

Thursday did not generally appreciate being woken up early. He was by no measure a late riser, but he kept himself in bed until a reasonable hour and was none too happy to hear the phone ring at two o'clock in the morning. He turned over, hoping it would stop. But it only kept shrieking, making jagged cut after jagged cut through the clean silence of the night. With a sigh, Thursday rolled out of bed, slid his feet into his slippers, and plodded down the stairs.

As he made his way to the telephone, he glanced outside and noticed with a jolt that it was snowing. Bit late, really. It was only 4 days until Christmas.

He put the receiver to his ear and greeted, "Thursday."

"Sir," came Strange’s voice, "I'm coming to get you. Morse called in not ten minutes ago."

Thursday's world came into a sudden sharp focus. "Why didn't you call ten minutes ago, then?"

"Sorry, sir. I was trying to figure out where he is. He didn't know." Strange's voice was still stubbornly professional, but Thursday had been a detective too long to not notice the tremor in his voice.

"Strange," said Thursday, a long, drawn-out word, "is Morse alright?"

"No, sir."

A cold hand gripping the lump in his throat, Thursday choked out, "Ring the door when you get here," and slammed the phone back in its cradle. He raced upstairs to get dressed, only to find Win sitting up in bed.

"What was that all about?" she asked, the lamp on her bedside table providing the only light in the room.

"It was Strange. He got a call in from Morse. We're going to get him."

Instantly, Win was up. "Call me as soon as you can once you get him. Make sure he's alright, will you?"

Thursday sighed, and turned to his closet so he wouldn't have to face Win as he said, "Constable Strange already told me he isn't." Trying to ignore her gasps and the sounds as she shuffled about behind him, Thursday diligently picked out a shirt and pants and a tie and even after he'd gotten all that, he still couldn't turn back to look at his wife. This was Morse, a detective constable who had more brains than sense, and more importantly was his responsibility. If Morse was in trouble, if he wasn't okay, it was because Thursday had let him down.

Win guided him back to the bed, his clothes still in his hands, and sat with him. "Fred, one thing at a time. Find him, take care of him, then worry."

* * *

Strange arrived about three minutes later and the two of them embarked on the most dangerous car ride Thursday had ever had. While the constable was usually reasonably cautious and drove with a good idea of the flow of traffic, the car he'd taken had emergency lights and Strange took full advantage of them. They blew past other cars, the few that were on the road at such an hour, hurtling down the street and taking lefts and rights much sharper than Thursday would've ever dared. Cutting the usually-thirty minute drive in half, the two of them arrived in Abingdon and carefully tracked down the roads Morse had given to Strange. It was the first 'careful' thing they'd done since Thursday had left his house and it already felt slow.

"That's the only phone box on this corner," Thursday said, pointing. Strange pulled over and left the car to idle. There was someone crouched in the phone box and the sides were red with blood. Panic seized at Thursday's chest again, but he forced himself to calm down. As they neared the phone box, he realized the person scrubbing at the sides wasn't Morse at all. He looked around and realized there was a couple being interviewed by a few constables a few meters away.

"We got a call from this phone box," Thursday said as one of the constables approached him, probably to tell him that civilians were supposed to stay back. He took out his ID. "Detective Inspector Thursday, City Police. Do you know where the man who called us is?"

"He went to the hospital, sir," the constable told him. "The young man and woman over here," he gestured to the couple behind him, "found him just a little more than twenty minutes ago. They called an ambulance. We're interviewing them now, sir."

"What hospital did they take him to?" asked Thursday.

The constable gave him directions and promised to mail any results of the mailbox or any information the couple had to Cowley station. With that, Thursday and Strange got back in their car and drove in silence until they got to the hospital.

The hospital loomed over them once they got out of the car, imposing in its glow amid the darkness. This was where Morse was. It was possible it would be where he died.

Thursday and Strange went in, tension written in every motion.

The waiting room—bright paint faded to neutrality and peeling with neglect—hosted little more than a stack of outdated newspapers, some with news from the _fifties,_ even, surrounded by stiff chairs with cushions so thin as to almost not be there. Most of the lights had a bulb out, but the light above the door flickered irregularly. The only well-lit area was the receptionist's desk and it looked otherworldy amid the rest of the room. There were no sounds but the buzzing of the lights and the regular _cha-chunk_ of the receptionist's stapler. It felt almost peaceful.

Almost.

The room felt pulled taut, as if anything could pop its serenity. Thursday supposed he'd be 'anything.'

"Excuse me, miss," he said, fiddling with his pipe in his pocket. "I'm looking for a lad who was brought in here not too long ago. He might not have identification on him, but in case he did, his name's Endeavour Morse. Can you tell me where he is?"

The receptionist looked down at her desk, her eyes flicking back and forth across a form. "I don't have anyone by that name. Can you give me a description of him or of his condition?"

"Short hair, light, and five foot ten inches. And his condition..." Thursday looked to Strange, who took the hint.

"He's in a bad way, I heard. Probably a head injury, lots of blood."

The receptionist hummed and she scanned her papers again. "I've got a John Doe matching that. Brought in about quarter of an hour ago. He was taken into surgery a little while ago, and you won't be able to go there. I'll tell you when he gets out of surgery though. It won't be too long, I should think. It rarely is. And you'll have to stick around to answer some questions, more than likely."

"Not a problem." Thursday and Strange retreated to the hard chairs.

"We should call the Chief Super," said Strange. Thursday nodded and fished some change out of his pocket.

"Good memory, constable."

It was only forty-five minutes later when the receptionist told the two of them that Morse was out of surgery and in the ICU. Though not stable and still unconscious, he wasn't losing any more blood and they'd dressed everything they could. He'd have to remain in the hospital for a while yet, but Thursday didn't have a problem with that. As long as Morse was being taken care of—not to mention Thursday _knew where he was_ for the first time in three weeks—he figured it would be fine.

Because Morse would pull through. He had the tenacity of a cockroach.

* * *

At eight-thirty that morning, the hospital had let Thursday and Strange in to sit with Morse. The poor lad had tubes stuck in him every which way and they could watch his heartbeat on the monitor. It was almost comforting to watch it, just to know it was still there. A nurse lurked in the room at all times, her eyes bright and sharp.

At nine, Bright arrived. Only two visitors were allowed in ICU rooms at a time, though, so Strange stepped out. Bright took one look at Morse and bowed his head, taking remarkably audible breaths. Thursday refused to budge from his chair. He listened to the heart rate monitor, trying unsuccessfully to divorce himself from the situation. This wouldn't be another Mickey Carter.

At 9:16, the beeping stopped, replaced by an unending whine that Thursday knew spelled death. He rocketed out of his chair to let people do their job as he was swamped by nurses. After a terrifying minute, Morse's heartbeat was revived and Thursday was more rattled than before. He left, to call Win, to call Joan, to even call Ms. Morse and let her know they'd found her brother. Just... to hear the voice of someone who wasn't tied to this godforsaken hospital.

Win picked up almost immediately, worry keeping her voice in the highest octave Thursday had ever known her to use. "Is he okay, Fred?" she asked first, and Thursday cringed.

"He's not, Win. They asked me and Strange what we knew of his injuries, gave us a rundown of 'em. He's in real bad shape." Thursday sighed. "He's in the ICU."

"He'll make it, Fred. He will."

Thursday didn't tell her how close Morse had come to slipping away.

Joan took a few rings to reach, but Thursday had expected that. She was staying with a friend and a late riser besides. She answered with an ill-concealed yawn, her voice weighed down with grogginess. "Who is it?"

"It's me," Thursday replied.

Joan only met him with exasperation. "I don't need a ride, dad. I didn't last night, I don't this morning. I _told_ you."

"I'm not calling about that; I'm too far to pick you up anyways. It's just been a rough morning, is all. I wanted to talk to you." Thursday was not prohibitive of affection, but he certainly didn't share it much, and he nearly surprised himself with how honest he was about the whole mess. "It's just good to hear your voice."

Joan's voice lost her annoyance immediately, replaced with a sort of concern that struck Thursday as almost like parenthood, like she was practicing. "Is everything alright?"

"We found Morse," Thursday said, and it was all he could say.

Joyce Morse didn't pick up until the tenth ring, and Thursday couldn't blame her.

"Joyce Morse?" she said as she answered.

"Hello Ms. Morse, this is Inspector Thursday of Cowley police station. I'm calling to update you on your brother's condition."

Ms. Morse gasped and something rustled. Thursday waited. "Is—is he okay? Is it good news or bad? What—" She took another breath, and Thursday heard her shaking. "He's alive, isn't he?"

"Yes, miss," Thursday said quietly. "He's alive."

"Oh, thank god."

"I'll give you the address to his hospital if you'd like to come down." Thursday winced at his misstep as soon as it was out of his mouth; he hadn't said Morse was in the hospital. But it was better to be honest and give her a chance to see him than to lie and cost her that. "It's in Berrick Prior."

"Please do," Joyce replied, her voice shaking. Thursday gave her the address and repeated it a few times so she had it all down. When he was done, Joyce gave him a clipped, "Thanks," and hung up.

Thursday put the phone back in its cradle, his hand still resting on it. He had to let go, he _knew_ that, and he had to go back to sit with Morse, but he didn't want to see the cuts on his face again or the feeble line that wavered only briefly with its beep. Morse could die, he knew, and Thursday also knew that he didn't want to see that. It was different to see the dead when they weren't one of your own.

"Are you going to hog the phone all morning?" grouched a man behind him, and Thursday stormed back to Morse's room.

* * *

A day after Thursday and Strange had found Morse, Joyce Morse arrived. She was maintaining her composure admirably for the situation, but her face was blotchy and her eyes were red, not to mention the fact that her handkerchief was still stained with tears. She rested a hand on the side of his hospital bed and sank into the chair, almost as if she didn't mean to.

"What happened?" she breathed.

"We don't know yet," admitted Thursday.

"What is he—what shape is he in?"

Thursday tightened his jaw. This topic had been one he was hoping to avoid, but it seemed inevitable. Still, he was loathe to disclose it all to Miss Morse, detestable as it was. "How much do you want to know about it?" he asked, instead of answering.

"What kind of a question is that?" Miss Morse clenched her fists in her lap and stared at her brother's face, which was still and unwrinkled, as though he was only resting. "This is my _brother._ I want to know _everything."_

Thursday couldn't quite get the words out, so he looked to the ever-present nurse, Helen, for help. She obliged with a sort of professional sympathy.

"He has a few broken bones, miss. One bone is broken in several places and some of the others managed to break the skin. One of his ribs punctured his lung, I'm afraid, but we've dealt with it." She shifted, unsure of when to stop. "There's a lot of bruising around his stomach and he had a touch of hypothermia when he came. Fortunately, we don't think he'll suffer any long-term effects. That said, his other injuries are substantial. We don't know when he'll wake up."

Thursday closed his eyes. He didn't have the same squeamishness Morse did, but even hearing everything that'd happened to his bagman, no matter how softened it was, was difficult to bear.

Miss Morse was doing substantially worse, and burst into tears.

"There, there," the nurse said, and Thursday barely stifled a snort. "He's going to be fine, when all of this is through. Our staff is very good at what we do—not to mention that your brother has managed to come this far."

Thursday excused himself and bravely fled into the hall.

* * *

By the third day, Thursday was rumpled, greasy, and irritated. He'd been in a hospital for approximately 82 hours, with only one eight-hour break during which he'd gone home, took a nap and a shower, and picked up some food from Win only to race back to the hospital. Morse hadn't improved much since the first morning and heartbeat was thready and erratic, but he'd yet to totally fail, which Thursday counted as a victory. It was early on Christmas Eve morning, and Thursday knew he'd need to go back home soon so he wasn't totally unpleasant for dinner and Christmas Day, but he was finding it harder and harder to leave the poor lad's side. Joyce was staying in some hotel in the surrounding area, but she wasn't around all the time. She, Thursday suspected, was still trying to do something that remotely resembled normal.

Normalcy wasn't something that you could force, though. And it certainly wasn't a component of Thursday's life when his bagman was lying in a hospital bed.

No, so long as Morse was as close as he was to dying, Thursday would be watching out for him. Afterward, whatever happened then, Thursday would hunt down whoever was responsible and beat them to a pulp, as they'd done with Morse. It wouldn't do to let such a person go free. It wouldn't be right. So long as dried blood still stained the phonebooth Morse had been found in, Thursday would be out for new blood.

It was noon when Thursday woke up in the chair to the sun blinding him through the window with its partner in crime, the ten inches of snow that had fallen over the past few days. At first, all he could do was close his eyes and hope he went back to sleep, but he heard something. He heard _Morse._

"'spect'r," the DC mumbled again, his voice warped by exhaustion.

The nurse hurried forward before Thursday could, briskly conducting a thousand tiny examinations Thursday barely registered. When she was done at last, she marked the results on the clipboard at the end of Morse's bed and nodded to Thursday, a tiny smile on her face.

Morse said something else, something that sounded like 'worm eye,' and Thursday leaned forward in his seat. "You're in the hospital at Berrick Prior. Been here three days, and you'll probably stay a while longer, given the state you're in. I'm glad you've woken up though—the whole station is worried sick." He almost managed to say, 'Not me, though, I knew you too well,' but that was both true and untrue: Thursday _did_ know Morse better than the other officers at Cowley did, and knew that Morse was perfectly capable of getting himself into trouble that could very well kill him.

"S'rry," Morse slurred. "Meant t'... get back."

Thursday raised an eyebrow. "To the nick? In your condition?" _From Berrick Prior?_ Thursday didn't say, but still. Had Morse known where he was?

"No, before. I was—" He cut himself off with a cough, but his voice got stronger afterward. "I stalled for a while. Didn't tell 'im."

Thursday felt like his brain had been jolted to life with jumper cables. Morse might know who took him. He probably knew why, if the man had asked for information. He hadn't been hurt for some time, too, if Morse had intended to escape and get back to Cowley on his own. He couldn't overwhelm Morse, though, so better to keep each question simple.

"Didn't tell _who?"_

"Paulson," Morse replied. He shrunk into his pillow. "First name Hugh."

"Hugh Paulson died ten days ago," said Thursday gently, even though he knew it wasn't strictly true. Not with the crumbs in the coffin lining.

Morse just shook his head. "Faked. He didn't die, just left. Those three days were the worst of them all."

"Why was that?"

"He didn't leave any food. I only had water, and not much of it." Morse shook his head, but winced and stopped. "At least I had the water. I would be dead if I hadn't."

Three days? There was something else suspicious about that, something important...

Seven days ago, Amanda Goldsmith was killed brutally in a church, surrounded by religious imagery connecting her to Mary Magdalene. Steven Brown had been killed four days later and found in a church as well, all signs attaching him to Judas. And if Hugh Paulson had 'died' three days before Ms. Goldsmith had and been away from wherever he was keeping Morse for three days... That fit perfectly with the rest of the timeline, so long as he was painted the killer. Circumstantial, sure, but still. Any prosecution attorney worth their salt could get a conviction out of that.

"Sir," Morse said, struggling up on his elbows despite his cast, "did Strange get someone to protect Ms. Teri Lightfoot? When I called, I told him to do that, but I might have been too quiet."

Thursday's face hardened to stone, not willing to think about Morse being quiet anymore. "He didn't, no. Don't think it had anything to do with your voice, though. He was probably focusing on the fact you'd just called in for the first time in 3 weeks."

"How long's it been, again?"

"How long in the hospital or how long you've been missing?"

"Just in the hospital."

"You've been here three days, Morse. It's the 24th." Thursday glanced to the nurse, who was staring at her patient as if she expected him to fall over at any second. Hardly encouraging, that was.

"But—the 24th of December—Sir, it's Christmas Eve! Why're you here, then, when you should—" Morse stammered, obviously looking for a way to say 'why aren't you with Mrs. Thursday and your children now' without it sounding like he was ordering a superior around. Eventually, he settled on, "Christmas is supposed to be with family," and shut his mouth.

"Generally, we like to be healthy around the holidays, too. We can't always get what we want." Thursday's eyes crinkled with a tense smile.

"You _can,_ sir. You don't _have_ to be here."

"Morse, do you know what ward you're in?" Thursday gestured to the room. "You're in the ICU. This is where you've been since you were brought in. You've almost died three times now; your heart gave out. You shouldn't be alone right now. Dying alone is a rotten way to go." Easier to just say it than to dance around the fact.

"I'm _not_ alone, I've got the nurse."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

Morse groaned in pain and fell back into the bed, holding his right arm as well as he could with the layers upon layers of plaster surrounding. "Did you call my sister?"

Thursday nodded. "I had to; she's your next of kin." Morse turned to look at him, his face still pinched. "She's still in town, if you want to see her. She'll probably come in on her own, matter of fact. Don't worry."

"Not worried," Morse murmured, his eyes dragging down. "Not worried."

* * *

Once he was assured that there was no way Morse would pass away in the night, not now that he'd woken up a few times with encouraging lucidity, Thursday drove back up to Cowley Station. After speaking with Morse, he had a pretty definite to-do list: get Teri Lightfoot a protective detail, find Hugh Paulson, figure out why on earth he wanted to kill Teri Lightfoot, and then beat the bastard halfway to death in the event he looked Morse's way again.

He was looking to some items on the list more than others.

Still, getting Ms. Lightfoot a protective detail wasn't hard—he had Strange bring her down to the station, where he interviewed her, explaining they were pretty sure someone was after her and that it would really be best if she had someone outside her house.

For a woman in her late forties, Ms. Lightfoot looked remarkably old. Her face was more wrinkled than a raisin and her hair was already salt and pepper. One of her hands looked very nearly arthritic.

The weirdest thing about her, though, was how unsurprised she was that someone might want to kill her.

"I almost thought it would happen sooner," she said when he asked about it. "Given what I've been writing. People don't really like to hear the truth, I've found, and I've been making a living saying things most would prefer go unsaid."

"Ms. Lightfoot, what exactly do you write?"

"I write for newspapers, mostly. Editorials. All about how we give people in church a facade to hide behind—the expectation that they will be good people, that their attendance in a building will guarantee their morality." She laughed quietly. "I suppose someone I wrote about took offense."

In Thursday's mind, something finally clicked into place. "You wouldn't happen to be La Vérité, would you, Ms. Lightfoot?"

She gave a funny sort of twitch before resettling into her chair. "I am, matter of fact."

"Do you have any idea of a particular person who'd like to see you dead?"

She thought for a second, resting her chin on her gnarled right hand. "I'm not sure, I'm afraid. I interviewed some of the people I wrote about, but never told them exactly what I was writing for. The only ones I know murdered people are still in prison."

Thursday felt a headache starting to grow. "You interviewed people you _knew_ had committed murder and then wrote about them?"

"Yes, but as I said, they're all still in jail."

"How about one Hugh Paulson?"

"Oh, I didn't interview him, since the story was already so well-covered. But I could see why he might be upset with what I wrote." Ms. Lightfoot started shaking slightly. She reached for the glass of water Strange had gotten her, but she couldn't hold it still and placed it back on the table with what she could salvage of her dignity. "My apologies, Inspector. It's one thing to realize I might have someone after me with deadly intent, but it's quite another to have it actually happen."

"It's quite alright, ma'am."

She folded her hands in her lap. She looked over her shoulder through the office door at the bustling nick, full of constables and sergeants looking for who had taken Morse and killed Brown and Goldsmith. Thursday couldn't tell what she was thinking.

"If I may ask, who told you I was in danger?"

Thursday sighed. "A constable of ours."

Ms. Lightfoot didn't respond for a few minutes. She took a sip of her water successfully but couldn't seem to do much more. "I suppose I ought to take you up on your protective detail then."

Thursday nodded and saw her out.

* * *

When Thursday arrived back at the hospital, Jakes was in Morse's room. He flipped through his notebook, crossing off some things and making annotations on others. Morse was sitting up with a crossword, though his eyelids were looking heavier by the second. He looked up when Thursday came in, but went back to his crossword when Thursday did nothing but stare.

Thursday had never thought Morse and Jakes really got along, but here they were, working in the same room without bickering. Without talking, either, but they didn't seem to be actively arguing.

"Alright there, Morse?" he asked after too long a silence.

"Fine, sir," Morse answered. His pen drifted across the paper, inaccurate and clumsy due to his cast.

"No," corrected Jakes. "He's not much better or worse, sir, but he's not fine."

"He didn't flatline again, though, right?"

"No, sir, he did not."

Thursday nearly pulled his pipe out of his pocket but glanced out the door at Nurse Helen, who'd nearly taken his hand off the last time he'd tried. Jakes, he noticed, didn't have a cigarette in his mouth. "Morse, how much do you remember about where you were?"

Morse looked up so quickly that Thursday almost asked if his neck was alright. His bagman's eyes were wide, his face bloodless. In a voice so faint Thursday had to strain to hear it, he said, "What?"

Jakes had stopped writing.

"Do you know where you were?" Thursday pressed on. "Could you tell us?"

Morse's heart monitor beeped quicker, like an unnerving metronome. "I—I suppose, sir, but I—"

Jakes stood, looking back and forth between the Inspector and Constable. "Sir, may I speak with you outside?"

Thursday obliged, and they went into the hall, leaving Morse with his crossword and contraptions.

"I found it best not to ask him about much, Inspector," Jakes said. "I tried asking him a few things earlier, but it was hard enough getting anything out of him. He's not healthy in body or mind, sir. He's trying to help, I reckon, in any way he can, but it's not doing him any good."

 _Maybe,_ thought Thursday, _it was better Mickey Carter hadn't lived past that ditch._

"Have we anything to go on?"

"Not in terms of location. He knows names and such, but I don't think he's got any idea where he was while he was missing." Jakes held up his notebook. "I've got a few notes on the things he's said in his sleep or details he let slip when he wasn't thinking about it, but he's in no shape for an interview."

Thursday peered through the window into Morse's room and saw his bagman slumped into his pillow. "Best let him rest, then, hmm?"

Jakes followed his gaze. For all that he and Morse seemed to clash, his expression grew soft. "Yessir."

* * *

The concrete floor was still cold. After nearly a month, it was only getting colder. Morse was tired and hungry and thirsty, which probably didn't do anything good for his body heat, and propped against the desk he'd been working at. Maybe he could have escaped earlier, when he was still in full control of his faculties, but not now. A solid three weeks of even worse nutrition than he had when he was working hadn't done him any favors, and the day of nothing at all had definitely made it all worse. There wasn't much point in keeping on, now. Not when he'd solved the puzzle. If Paulson didn't have him, Teri Lightfoot was safe. It was math easier than any at the university.

The metal door creaked open, and Morse jumped. If he ever heard that door again, it would be too soon.

He listened to the heavy footsteps of the deranged murderer who'd locked him in the warehouse. They stopped not far from him, but Morse didn't have the energy to turn his head.

"Will I have to repeat myself or are you going to answer the bloody question already?"

Paulson's voice scraped his ears like the metal chair he'd been given across the concrete floor.

"I told you yesterday," Morse rasped. "I don't know who wrote those articles about you. I don't have enough to go on."

He didn't expect the kick to his face, and the surprise made him fall over more than the blow. Well, that and the bone-heavy exhaustion that he'd learned to live with.

"The paper says you're the smartest pig in Oxford. You've got more than enough! Who wrote those articles!"

Another kick, this one to his stomach.

"I don't— _know!"_

The name Teri Lightfoot hovered on his tongue, but he couldn't say it; if not for Ms. Lightfoot's safety, then for his own. He had no way to guarantee that Paulson would keep him alive past when he was considered useful.

Another kick, then another. Another and another and another... "Who is it, you shithead!"

"Not—a damn—clue."

Paulson stepped on his arm, slowly applying more and more pressure until Morse screamed for the first time in a week. "I know this hurts you, pig. Tell me who wrote those articles. Tell me or I'll break the damn bone."

 _I think you already have,_ Morse thought weakly.

Paulson pulled him up by the torn collar of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. Morse felt the wound on his head open up again and blood trickled down his neck. He groaned.

"Tell me," Paulson hissed and all Morse could process was the stench of tobacco on his breath.

"'dunno," Morse slurred.

His fist slammed into Morse's stomach. Morse coughed. "Who?"

"I coul'n't... tell," said Morse. "I... dunno..."

Paulson dropped him on the floor in disgust. "Way the paper talked 'bout you, thought I had some'ne special on my hands. Turns out you're as much an idiot as the rest of us. What a letdown."

He kicked him again, then punched his nose, and Morse loosened his grip on reality, relieved to fade into the numb darkness of unconsciousness.

* * *

When Morse started thrashing in bed, Thursday and Jakes had been going over everything they had and sipping tepid tea. Nurse Helen passed by to check on Morse, then called for help. Even in catastrophe, she didn't seem frantic, but the pounding of shoes against the beaten linoleum made Thursday's heart race. Something _was_ wrong. Of that, he was certain. But the nurses wouldn't let him in, even after they'd managed to wake the poor lad up and check him out.

"We can't be sure what caused it," Nurse Helen told him, "until he starts talking. And we don't want to introduce and undue stress."

Part of Thursday wanted to interject and say that all this was causing _him_ undue stress, but he couldn't exactly compare his fear for Morse to Morse's fear of everything else around him.

Jakes left then, saying he'd ask Strange to drop by when he could. Thursday appreciated the quiet at first, but all too soon the emptiness of the halls was filled with his concerns and conspiracy theories. If he'd asked Morse, his bagman would more than likely be ecstatic to start working, even in bed, but Morse was recovering.

_Morse might never recover._

But that couldn't be true. The lad had gotten shot and come back a little jumpy, sure, but then he was fine. He'd be fine now, too, as long as he took care of himself.

Left to his thoughts, Thursday stared vacantly at the peeling paint opposite the hard chairs that hadn't been updated since the forties. He had to be missing something. He had to have seen something or heard something that could point him in the direction of the killer and Morse's kidnapper. He was a good copper, at least better than some, and he had to have something to do.

Maybe, though, they wouldn't have anything to go on.

The thought of Morse looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, looking for his abductor, made Thursday's stomach turn over. That wouldn't be fair, wouldn't be _right._

Strangely, the rescue from his mind came from Nurse Helen, of all people.

After an indeterminate time had passed, she approached him in the hall with a new cup of tea and a scrunched expression. "He's asking to talk to you," she said, almost as if admitting it left a sour taste in her mouth. "He'd like to see you."

Thursday didn't need her to say who 'he' was, and darted down the hall to the ICU, which Morse had yet to get out of. He arrived at Morse's door out of breath and with a well of concern bubbling over in his chest.

"You wanted to talk to me," he said, but that phrase felt wrong. He said it to Bright when he was about to be torn a new one. He said it to Win when something was wrong with the kids. He'd never said to Morse before, and it felt like a sort of deference he only gave to dying men. Morse wasn't dying.

But he wasn't healthy, either.

Morse frowned. For some reason, it seemed more reassuring than when his face was smooth and peaceful. "I wrote everything I can remember," he said quietly. "It was easier to write it than explain it aloud. I don't know how much you know already, so it's everything."

Thursday nodded. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

He rounded the bed, taking in Morse's health. His cheeks had more color in them, but also more scratches. His plastered arm hung from his neck in a new sling. The bandages around his ribs were new and not as bloody as the last ones Thursday had seen, so the lad didn't look as bad as he'd been a few hours ago. Still, he moved stiffly and like most movements cost him his comfort. Jerkily, Morse gestured to a legal pad next to his bed.

"It's all there, sir. I hope it helps."

Thursday flipped through the pages, surprised at the level of detail Morse was able to conjure up even when beaten to a bloody pulp. Page upon page was covered in Mores's handwriting, some words shakier than others.

He looked to Morse to thank him, but the lad looked like he was half-way to sleep already, so he just left to drive back to Cowley, legal pad tucked under his arm.

* * *

The bustle of the nick lurched to a halt when Thursday arrived with the papers of everything Morse had written. He'd gone to Bright first, but the rest of the nick wanted to hear everything too, and Thursday had to fight his way to his office. The excitement would die down soon enough, he was sure. He just had to get work done and file everything away.

The first time he scanned Morse's account, he was stuck for a whole minute on the matter-of-fact description of being carjacked.

Morse's writing wasn't flowery or metaphorical. It didn't beat around the bush. When Morse wrote, _"he put the barrel of the gun to my head,"_ Thursday had no doubt that was exactly what had happened. When he described the walk to Paulson's van, a gun to his stomach the whole time, and how he'd been knocked unconscious _"with a blunt object, perhaps lumber,"_ Thursday started taking notes of lumber mills in Berrick Prior.

Morse described an almost military routine of meals and wake-up time and work. He wrote about Paulson's search for the identity of La Vérité, everything Paulson had mentioned about his girlfriend's second job and how it disgraced him—Thursday had known, since seeing her connection to Magdalene cabs, that Amanda Goldsmith had worked as a prostitute. Morse wrote about Paulson's rants of how she'd lied and hidden the truth from him. He'd listened to the man mutter to himself about making sure his home was clean, as if a desperate need for money was contagious. He'd heard him curse the name of his co-worker and passenger who'd broken his leg in the car crash. Heard him mutter about seeing the people who'd defamed him die.

Thursday hoped he never had to read such vitriol again, but he knew he'd have to.

By the time he'd read through the whole thing, Thursday's blood was boiling and he itched to beat Paulson to a million bloody pieces. It was a good thing he didn't know where the bastard was.

The second time he read it, he took note of the words that Morse's pen shook more on than others.

'Blood' was one. 'Warehouse,' 'concrete,' and 'food' were others. Putting them all together, they painted a pretty gruesome picture of the condition Morse had been living in. The list of injuries sustained near the end broke Morse's format—it was presented in bare-bones bullet points. Some of the letters were written more than once, with the older layers so shaky as to be illegible.

Thursday, after the third time he read it, was ready to collapse with exhaustion. It just hurt, plain and simple, to read what Morse had gone through. It hurt knowing that he'd been distracted from looking by more murders, more harm, inflicted by the same ruddy man that had kidnapped Morse.

But he had a duty as a copper and as one of the few people looking out for Morse. Weary, he packed up his notes and Morse's legal pad and went to explain the whole mess to Bright.

* * *

The raid on the north-most branch of Benson's Sawmills went by quickly. There were ample blood samples and probably a dozen different places they could get fingerprints, so Thursday had tentatively decided to call it a success.

They still didn't have Hugh Paulson in custody or much to go on for his location, but it seemed like a good start. With any luck, some of the blood would be Paulson's and they'd have more than a confession, even though Thursday felt that, as it was _Morse's_ confession, it ought to be enough.

For the first time in nearly a week, Thursday went home to his wife for more than a few hours. He had an actual dinner with his wife and with Joan. Sam had written a letter which they passed around at dinner, happy to talk about something light-hearted. Joan mentioned only once that she hoped they could figure out who had hurt Morse before Win asked her to remember the hat stand rule and the fact that they were having pork for dinner.

Joan poked at her dinner with her fork, looking like an eight-year-old all over again.

"He's going to be okay, right?" she asked, still staring at her plate.

Win put down her fork and squeezed Thursday's hand, a familiar, reassuring gesture. Even so, he could tell she wanted to ask, too.

"Yes," he said, "he'll be fine, love. Up and about in no time, and no mistake."

The phone rang then, and Win rose to get it. From the hall, she called, "Fred, it's for you!"

For all that he reassured his family, those words undercut any confidence he had in Morse's recovery. Being called at home was never a good sign.

"Fred Thursday," he said once he'd cradled the phone under his chin. His voice already sounded tired, much to his dismay. "Has something happened to—"

"Morse is fine, sir," said Strange at the other end. "It's Ms. Lightfoot. The PCs at her house caught someone trying to break in, but he got away. A few of the lads are trying to track 'im down now. Just thought you should know."

It was probably Paulson. If they could just catch him, just jail and try him and send him to prison, everything would end well.

"Thanks for the update, Constable. Call me if there's any more news."

"Sure thing, sir. See you tomorrow."

He settled back at the table, met by his wife and daughter's worried expressions. They nearly matched. "Is everything—" Joan started to ask.

"Everything's alright, don't worry about it." He picked at the remainders of the pork. "It's just work. After a month, I just jumped to conclusions."

They cleaned up together and moved into the living room after that to watch TV. Joan got out the program guide and walked them through all the shows she liked until they finally settled on a channel that had re-runs of olf movies on it. About half-way through Casablanca, the phone rang again.

"I'll get it this time, love," Thursday said. "Seeing as you got it last time."

He made his way unhurriedly to the front hall, wondering who or what exactly was making such a fuss _now._ He was at home with his family; couldn't he have just one night of peace? Surely he didn't need to be informed of Ms. Lightfoot's every movement, if that's what it was about again.

He picked up the phone and before he could even say his name, Strange's voice came over the phone at an appalling high volume, "Sir! We haven't got him, but we know where's heading! He's going to the hospital where Morse is!"

His coat was on in an instant. "I'm on my way. Do whatever you have to to hold that bastard off!"

"Fred!" Win cried from the living room, slightly scandalized. "Watch your language in this house!"

"Dad, where you going now?" Joan asked, padding into the hall from the kitchen. "What's happened?"

No point in lying, hat stand rule or no.

"It's Morse," he said. "Someone's going after him."

And with that, he pulled on his hat and dashed out the door to where his Jag sat in the driveway. Copper or not, he wouldn't be paying much attention to speed limits. Not when Morse's life was at stake.

* * *

Strange drove as fast as he dared through the streets to Berrick Prior, the other officers not far behind. He hadn't seen Morse much, at least not awake, since he and the old man had found him in the hospital, but he knew from Thursday's accounts that the constable was still in a bad way. If the damned son of a bitch made Morse any worse, Strange was liable to start knocking heads together.

Morse had nightmares, Thursday had said.

Morse could barely talk about the incident, he'd mentioned.

He pressed the gas pedal to the floor of the car, willing it to drive faster.

He saw someone getting out of a car and dashing into the hospital just as he pulled into the parking lot, but Strange couldn't tell if it was one of the officers from the precinct or not. Not, at least, from this far away.

Strange pulled into the first spot he found and sprinted to the hospital. The receptionist barely looked up at him.

He raced down the halls to Morse's room, glad he didn't have to ask for directions. As he got closer, he realized the ward was oddly quiet in a way it shouldn't be. The nurses, he knew, should still have been up and about. There likely should have been a janitor in the halls. But there was no one at all that he could see.

A gunshot and a scream. The slam of a door. Then, the ringing of a curtain being pulled.

Strange's hand twitched to his belt, where he only had his cosh. It wouldn't be much use against a murderer with a firearm unless he had the advantage of surprise.

"You told them!" screeched an anguished voice. "You bastard, you told them everything!"

It wasn't encouraging that all Strange heard in reply was a gasp for air and a gurgle. He crept closer to Morse's room, cosh in one hand.

He stopped when he saw Nurse Helen, one hand clutched to her stomach. Blood covered the linoleum beneath her and stained her blue uniform. She scrabbled for the window sill of Morse's room, but her fingers were slippery with blood and she couldn't get a good grip.

Strange peeked at Morse's room, but he couldn't see Morse's bed. There was a blue curtain around it, with a silhouette printed on it of someone sitting next to whoever was in the bed.

Paulson next to Morse.

"Ma'am," he hissed to Nurse Helen, "what can I do to help you?"

"Nothing," she breathed back. "Nothing. I've—I've got it under control. I'll—I'll deal with this. I know more about it than you, anyway. Just... help Morse, the man inside."

Strange looked back into the room, just in time for, "I could have gotten her too, but you _ruined_ it all!" to cut into his eardrums like a butcher knife. A soft gasp for air was all he heard from Morse.

Seized with sudden decision, Strange took off his shoes and slid through the open door, prepared to beat Paulson over the head once he was within a few feet of him.

"And you _knew,_ didn't you! You knew who was writing about me, but you wouldn't let me do what needed to be done! It's God's will!" screamed Paulson. "God's will that we see pursue righteous action against those who go against Him and His devout!"

Was that really what Paulson thought he was? Devout to a god? Strange couldn't quite be sure, but he thought he'd heard somewhere that 'thou shalt not kill' was a pretty important part of the Biblical canon.

He slammed his cosh against the head of the silhouette and, with an inhuman cry, Paulson crumpled over Morse's hospital bed.

Strange yanked the curtain back. Morse coughed for air and his neck was already discoloured, but he was alive.

"Alright then, matey?"

* * *

By the time Thursday got to the hospital in Berrick Prior, it was all over. Morse had sustained some damage to his windpipe, but that was about it. In comparison to the last time Thursday had rushed to see him in a hospital bed, it felt like a goddamn miracle.

They had Hugh Paulson, at last. He seemed to feel that a confession was good for him, because he'd started laying out everything he'd done before they'd even shoved him into a police cruiser. Thursday had no doubt that the way he was telling it was more than a bit North of heavily biased, but Morse would be able to fill in the logical gaps when the whole bloody mess got to court. Morse, it seemed, would be able to do quite a lot in a month or so, when he'd gotten better.

Thursday wasn't sure it all counted as 'happily ever after,' not least because something like it would probably happen again, but it seemed to be one of the best outcomes they could have hoped for.

Morse was alive, Ms. Teri Lightfoot was alive, Hugh Paulson was in custody, and even Nurse Helen seemed on the mend.

It felt good. It felt like it was how it ought to be.

Then, thinking of a month-old promise, he went to the phone and dialed.

After a few rings, he heard a groggy, "Monica Hicks speaking."

"Sorry for calling so late, Ms. Hicks. I just wanted to call you about Morse. I rather forgot earlier."

A pause. Thursday almost wondered if the call had dropped before he heard a much more alert, "What happened?"

"He's alive, Ms. Hicks. He's on the mend. I 'spect it won't be long until he can tell you all about it 'imself." Thursday sighed and leaned against the wall. "He'll be alright."

"And you know what happened?"

"Yes ma'am, we do."

Her voice breaking, she said, "Can I see him?"

Thursday gave her the address and she hung up, gushing thank-you's all the while. For a moment, he stood at the phone, hesitating to place it back in its cradle, but Morse was fine. He knew Morse was fine. Joyce was still in Berrick Prior and someone would be calling her any minute, if she hadn't been called already. Strange was driving back to Cowley with Paulson, where he wouldn't be able to hurt Morse anymore. Jakes had called in to say he'd be driving down in the morning. Bright had said the same. In just a day, Morse would be surrounded by people who cared about him.

For the moment, though, Morse was alone in a hospital ward.

Almost without realizing he'd made the decision, Thursday walked back to Morse's room and sat by his bed, a crossword and a pencil in his pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I've been working on this since September and it kind of got away from me. But I needed to finish it so I could complete my homework!
> 
> If you have any feedback, feel free to comment!


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